


Artoo Knows

by irhinoceri



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Force Ghosts, Force-Sensitive Droids, Gen, Inner Lives of Droids, mind wipe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 04:25:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9055198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irhinoceri/pseuds/irhinoceri
Summary: Artoo looks back on his life. An exploration on his thoughts and feelings about the events of Star Wars and his relationships to the other characters.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title based on "[R2 Knows](https://youtu.be/4JAiEYWlLYI)" by Claude Von Stroke feat. Barry Drift.

 “I have a bad feeling about this,” Artoo says to the Cloud City Central computer, when it tells him that the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon has been deactivated.

 “Does not compute. Droids do not have feelings.”

 Artoo ignores this, because he’s heard it before from others: droids and ship computers and organics alike. Not Threepio, though. He also has bad feelings, and does not question them. Maybe it’s because they are Jedi droids. Threepio has forgotten that—he has forgotten all the facts, but you cannot forget a feeling. Artoo knows this now.

 

* * *

 

 Artoo knows things that even he does not think about. Memories he keeps from himself except for moments when he takes them out and runs through them again. Memories deliberately archived and stored in backup drives the organics don’t bother to access when they run performance checkups or data wipes. He has many secrets.

 Sometimes he asks Threepio, “Do you remember when….?” and Threepio tuts and scoffs and makes comments about his wires being faulty and his circuits acting up. Artoo doesn’t do this often because it gives him a feeling he does not like.  It’s a feeling like loneliness. A feeling droids aren’t supposed to have.

 When Bail Organa ordered the memory wipe on Threepio, Artoo had snorted in amusement because that’s what Threepio got for running his mouth all the time. When Threepio first came back from getting his reformat done he didn’t know who Artoo was and introduced himself like a stranger and suddenly it wasn’t so funny anymore.

 On the surface, Threepio is the same as always. But he isn’t himself. He doesn’t remember who made him or where he came from, has had lies reprogrammed in so that no one will know he was once a Jedi’s droid, and that is when Artoo finally realizes that Anakin is gone.

 This is when Artoo begins to carefully sort out and back up his own important memories and hide them deep within subdrives.

 Organics do not have minds like droids. Artoo knows that you are not supposed to be able to wipe their memories or reformat their personalities or reprogram their prime directives. But that is exactly what seems to have happened to Anakin, the way that Obi-Wan and Yoda had talked about him. It matched the way he had acted in the final days before he left Artoo with the ship and disappeared on Mustafar, never to return.

 Artoo knows who Darth Vader is, but he tells himself it’s just the chassis of his old master and nothing more. How else could he explain it? It’s easier to put it behind him that way, because if he thought Anakin was still alive, still himself, he would want to get back to him. He wouldn’t be able to be content in the service of Captain Antilles if he thought his old master was looking for him. But Darth Vader is not looking for him and Threepio doesn’t remember him and nothing is the same anymore.

 Droids don’t feel and organics can’t be reprogrammed. That’s what everyone says. But Artoo knows better.

 

* * *

 

 Artoo knows that organics create each other by growing small prototypes inside their chassis. It’s a horrifying thing to think about. It seems to scare even them.

 The first time he sees Luke and Leia they are tiny and don’t look like human beings should. They are like toy sized reproductions with the dimensions all wrong.

 Padmé shuts down and Artoo knows this is not what is supposed to happen. He’s no medical droid, but he’s been around organics long enough to know what mothers and children are. He knows that mothers aren’t meant to just shut down like this.

 But this is what happens. And it gives Artoo a terrible feeling. A feeling he does not like. She was his mistress for many years. He files all his memories of her away for safe keeping but takes them out again, one by one, when he is in low power mode or hooked up to a recharging station.

 Occasionally he sees Leia and to him, she is like Anakin and Padmé both, as if someone took them apart and combined all their pieces and created a new model. This is, perhaps, how it always is with organics. They are very strange.

 It is many years before he sees Luke again, and he is like Leia but different, as if they put more of Padmé into him and less of Anakin when they were making him. But they are both there all the same.

 Obi-Wan’s chassis is worn down, barely recognizable, like how Threepio’s gets dulled and nicked when it is scoured and damaged by time and wear. But his internal programming hasn’t changed a bit.

 When he tells Luke that Darth Vader murdered his father, Artoo thinks this must be how organics tell themselves reprogramming works. And he’s not wrong. Except that usually a droid doesn’t reprogram and reformat itself. But if any organic could manage such a feat, it would be Anakin. He’d always been different. Just like Artoo.

 Even though he had been eager to get to Obi-Wan and fulfil Leia’s mission, he does not complain when Obi-Wan seems not to remember him at all. Perhaps it is for the best. Perhaps Obi-Wan is keeping secrets, or perhaps he has faulty circuits. After all, organics do not last as long as droids and they begin to break down sooner. Obi-Wan looks to be breaking down.

 Artoo keeps his secrets hidden just as he has always done. No one will notice that he knows what he shouldn’t and try to reprogram him if he pretends to be as clueless and cavalier as Threepio. And so he knows but he does not say that Leia and Luke are a matched set, manufactured at the same time by the same makers.

 He thinks that Padmé would be very happy with how her children turned out.

 He replays her in the hidden parts of his mind. He wonders if he should show Luke. Maybe someday.

 He hopes that Luke always remains the same. He quickly becomes very fond of Luke. If he allows himself to consider Luke going away forever, the way that Anakin did, he feels very bad.

 

* * *

 

 In the darkness on Endor a celebration rages. The organics sing and dance and the ewoks peel the armor off the stormtroopers and roast their bodies and use their helmets as drums. Artoo is there, and Threepio rests his hand on his dome, talking about how wonderful it will all be now that they don’t have to run around being chased and blown up and sold to Hutts and all that unpleasantness.

 Artoo gets a strange feeling, like there is another hand on his dome. But this one is not metal or plastisteel or flesh. It’s like a hologram but no one is projecting it. It looks like the memories he has of Anakin, the ones he stores where no one can access them, the ones he hasn’t dared to open and examine for a very long time.

 “I’m glad you two are alright,” says the strange hologram, and Artoo fears that somehow he’s malfunctioned and he’s projecting this image involuntarily. But he’s not—he’s quite sure that his projector is off.

 Anakin starts to fade, and Artoo beeps out a frantic, “Wait! Don’t go!”

 “I’m not going anywhere,” says Anakin. “I’ll always be here. In the Force.” But he leaves, all the same.

 “What on earth was that?” says Threepio, turning awkwardly to and fro. In his confusion he evidently just decides to believe that it was Artoo’s doing, and he asks, “Was that a message for Master Luke? Don’t just project random holograms into the middle of the woods. Really, Artoo, you should pay more attention. He’s over there,” and he points to where Luke is sharing a drink with Lando near the fire.

 “It wasn’t for Luke,” replies Artoo.

 “Who was that? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before,” muses Threepio.

 “You don’t know him,” says Artoo. “Not anymore.”

 And he wheels away, back towards Luke, towards Lando and Han and Leia and Chewie, who are all solid and real. Still. For now. He leaves Threepio to stand on a rope bridge, turning jerkily and gazing around as if he sees things just at the edges of his photoreceptors, searching for feelings in place of the memories he has lost.

 

* * *

 

 When Luke goes away Artoo powers down to the barest minimum of a spark of life. He turns off all outward sensors and retreats deep inside to the places where he keeps his hiddenmost memories.

 He is a new droid again, shiny and straight off the factory floor. He relives his first battle, the one where Padmé pulled him aside and made him her special companion. He sees her face as she leans in close and cleans the sand out of his chassis. He remembers the first time he met Anakin, and then Threepio, and all the rest after that. Every adventure and quiet moment is there in full color and sound. Memories and reality are one. Old friends long gone are as real and present as they were in the moments past.

 On the outside, no one can get him to power up or respond again. Some think he has just become too old, such an old droid that has been through too much. Maybe its motivator has gone bad, someone says.

 Leia keeps him just as he is, rejecting suggestions to retire him or salvage him for scrap or try to replace parts to get him up and working again. She cannot tamper with Artoo, she knows this with a certainty of feeling and intuition that she has learned never to question. Luke will be back. Someday, he’ll be back, and he’ll want Artoo kept safe in the meantime.

 Artoo slumbers and in his dream memories he sees Luke’s face as he leans in close and scrubs the sand from Artoo’s chassis. Anakin and Padmé are there, as well, in overlapping visions of the past and whispers from the depths of the Force. Anakin is right: no one is ever truly gone.

 Years pass and Luke does not comes back, but there is a day when someone else comes and Artoo feels her approach, familiar and new like the endless recombinations of organics he has known.

 He awakens, lights flickering on and batteries powering up. It’s time, he knows, to stop waiting. It’s time for another adventure.


End file.
